Tips and Tricks

When you create a Zoom account, the system automatically generates a 10-digit personal meeting ID (PMI) that’s unique to you. But you can go into your account profile and change your PMI to something more personal and easy to remember — like your Stanford phone number. Remember to also check “Use Personal Meeting ID for instant meetings.” You can use your new custom PMI as the Meeting ID in all your Outlook meeting invitations.

While you’re editing your profile, take a few seconds to upload a photo. This gives people a nice image to look at when your video is disabled.

To join and start meetings faster, use the desktop app. Bonus: once you’ve joined another person’s meeting, that person’s meeting information will appear on a dropdown from the “Join” icon for fast-dial.

Here's another great feature that you can access from the desktop app. Click on the little black 'Settings' wheel in the upper right-hand corner. Use this to check that your microphone, camera, and speakers are working correctly before your meeting starts.

Zoom’s 'Touch up my appearance' feature adds a softer focus to your video display. This means the appearance of your skin tone may be enhanced and fine lines or blemishes less noticeable. You’ll find this feature in 'Settings>Video.' Go ahead and give it a try. Nobody but you will know you’ve touched up.

If you’re not in a quiet environment, mute your microphone when you’re not speaking. If you’re the forgetful type,  set Zoom to do it for you. Go to your 'Settings>Audio' and check 'Always mute microphone when joining a meeting.' Just remember to make sure you’re unmuted when you're ready to talk.

Echo is usually caused by two people sitting in the same room or near each other who separately join the same meeting with audio. It can also occur if one person joins twice with audio, such as by phone and PC. If you’re joining with multiple people in the same room, call in from the conference room phone or have only one person connect to audio. The remaining participants in the room should just close the audio prompt without joining.

By default, anyone in the meeting can share his or her screen by clicking on the 'Screen Share' icon. To avoid having a private pop-up message display during a meeting,  share an application instead of your desktop. Before your meeting starts, open the files you want to share.

Select the 'Record on this Computer' option to store the recording on your local computer or network drive. This gives you more flexibility for what you do with the it. You can keep the local recording on your computer for your own reference or archive it or share it on Stanford Medicine Box. The only time to select the 'Record to the Cloud' option is if you want to make it available to others to download directly from Zoom. But remember, recordings on the Zoom cloud are only available for 120-days.

Set yourself up to be able to add someone to your meeting on the fly. In 'Settings> General,' check 'Automatically copy invitation URL to Clipboard after meeting starts.' This feature makes it super easy to invite people to any meeting.